German hostility to a bailout for Greece was underlined yesterday when a professor vowed to launch a legal challenge against the country's involvement in the rescue.

Joachim Starbatty, an economist and professor at Tuebingen University, said he would take the challenge to the German constitutional court, claiming that his case would obtain ahearing because "our initiative has unbelievably big support".

It is thought the court could suspend German aid while it assessed its legality, but legal experts say that due to the matter's urgency, the court could also allow aid to flow while it looked into it.

Starbatty's claim on popular opinion is borne out by the German press whose front pages yesterday reflected the sense of panic and uncertainty surrounding the Greece debt crisis.

Leading the field was the tabloid Bild, hammering home the alarming message that: "The Greeks want even more of our billions!" The headline is crowned by the ominous figure: "25,000,000,000 euro!", the proportion of the bailout package Germany can expect to pay.

In an interview, Axel Weber, head of the Bundesbank, called the proposed bailout package "the last resort", but argued it "is currently the best means in my mind to prevent the crisis from extending with all its negative consequences, to other member states and the rest of the eurozone."

His comments were echoed by polling expert Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling institute, who said that popular opinion was not as hardened as headlines might suggest.

"People aren't as worked up about the issue as some media want you to believe," said Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling institute. "Germans realise it's only a loan and that it's better to act now than regret inaction later."

A German survey by the Infratest dimap pollsters this week showed the number of those opposed to financial aid for Greece falling to 57 percent, with 33 percent in favour. A February poll by Emnid found 68 percent opposed and 28 percent in favour.

Amid a plethora of articles about how the Greeks are reacting to the crisis, many papers report how the nation is seeking to blame outsiders.

Die Welt reports on the growing unrest on the streets of Athens, and suggests that "the Greeks' demands will lead to their self-destruction".

Greek psychologist Kostas Euthimiou, vice-president of the Panhellenic Psychologists Union, equates the behaviour of Greeks with that of "spoilt children" and plays on the widespread German belief that they are being unfairly forced to pay for a nation that has overindulged.

In an interview with the paper's Boris Kalnoky, Euthimiou highlights what he calls the nation's collective "seriously warped sense of reality ... which is like that of little children. They're living in a fairy-tale world ... When problems come up, they think a fairy or a mayor will come along and make everything better. They haven't learnt to solve problems for themselves and expect that someone from the outside world will come and solve it for them."

Even the usually staid weekly, Die Zeit, headlines its main Greek crisis story with the headline: "Are the Greeks Potty?"

In its lead editorial, the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung takes a highly critical view of the German reluctance to help out the Greeks, and lays some of the blame for the escalation of the crisis at the feet of Angela Merkel's government.

"Leave the Greeks be to solve their own problems, they should not get our money, is the overwhelming attitude of the Germans, according to initial opinion polls," the paper writes. "This helps to explain the puzzling procrastinations of the government," it says, referring to the fact the government has yet to say whether and how much it will pay towards a bailout largely because it still hopes it can hold off making a decision until after state elections in North Rhine Westphalia.

"Behind this wishy-washy behaviour is the huge fear of the 'boulevard'... which has control of the debate." Merkel, it suggests, has adjusted her behaviour in line with the headlines in Bild, according to which she has "reacted, manoeuvred and changed her course".

Next to the editorial is a cartoon showing Europe in the form of a bull attached via a rope to a pillar from the Acropolis, which is just about to pull Europe off a cliff face.